The End of Error

7 Fixed-size unum storage

Thomas Baines, Thomas Baines with Aborigines near the mouth of the Victoria River, N.T., 1857. Before the Warlpiri aborigines had much contact with other cultures, their counting system was “one, two, many.”

7.1 The Warlpiri unums

There are aboriginal hunter-gatherer people (such as the Warlpiri in Australia’s Northern Territory) whose language for numbers was limited to “one,” “two,” and “many” before they had contact with other cultures. Their original language is now almost lost, but we know they also had words for “none” (zero), “need” (negative), “junk” (NaN), and “all” (infinity), so in a sense their number ...